


Let Music Help Us See

by Phantomstardemon



Category: Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Additional Scene, Alternate Universe - Human, Ineffable Husbands (Good Omens), M/M, My First Fanfic, fanfic for fanfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-06
Updated: 2020-01-06
Packaged: 2021-02-27 09:00:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,582
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22144513
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Phantomstardemon/pseuds/Phantomstardemon
Summary: Ezra’s gaze follows Crowley until his precariously swaying hips have carried him through the door and around the corner. The sudden muffling of his carefree hum, caused by the snap of his door down the hallway, rips him out of his dreamy daze. Well, that was certainly something.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 11
Kudos: 13





	Let Music Help Us See

**Author's Note:**

  * For [UlsPi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/UlsPi/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Restricted Work] by [UlsPi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/UlsPi/pseuds/UlsPi). Log in to view. 



> This is a scene that wouldn’t leave me alone after reading chapter 3 of UlsPi’s “Pale Blue Eyes”. (Music and Good Omens in combination is too tempting to resist.) It is set immediately after chapter 3 of that story and hopefully doesn’t interfere with the story’s plot.
> 
> This won’t make sense if you haven’t read (or written) “Pale Blue Eyes”!
> 
> UlsPi, this is for you. Thank you so much for your inspiring work. <3 I hope you don’t mind me grabbing your sweet Ezra and torturing him a bit. ;)
> 
> This is my very first attempt at writing fanfic, and look, it’s fanfic for fanfic! Fanfic-ception.

Ezra’s gaze follows Crowley until his precariously swaying hips have carried him through the door and around the corner. The sudden muffling of his carefree hum, caused by the snap of his door down the hallway, rips him out of his dreamy daze. Well, that was certainly something.

He is quite torn between following the echo of Crowley’s generous touch to his body and listening to the music he has left behind in him. A bit at a loss after closing the door behind his visitor he looks around the wide room. The alcohol in his system softens his surroundings comfortably, but does nothing to lessen the aftershock of Crowley’s presence in his -up until then utterly Crowley-free- quarters.

With a heavy thud he flops down on his bed and drops his head somewhere in the vicinity of his pillow. Closing his eyes, he lets the memory of his impossibly attractive waiter’s touch rush through him. How perfectly they had fitted together. How utterly distracting his enticing smell had been from up close!

Ezra’s whole backside tingles, from his bum up all his spine to his neck where he remembers Crowley’s breath grazing his skin vividly enough to have goosebumps break out all over his arms. Good Lord, there hadn’t been a hairsbreadth of room between them from their shoulders right down to their knees! And for the time of their shared music Crowley surprisingly even seemed to be at peace with the number of his limbs as well as in complete control of all of them.

A small smile spreads on Ezra’s slightly flushed face without him taking notice of it. He is too busy swallowing down his accelerated heartbeat to be able to entirely re-immerse himself in the music that still gently floats through his whole being. This is how he sees you, it whispers as it creeps from his fingers, still blessed with a palpable memory of the notes that created the little marvel, deep into his heart. There’s you, Ezra, beauty captured in melody, seen through by the infallible eye of a musician, pierced more painfully than during your introspection when in search of answers from the Almighty.

_How can this be me, when it is so wondrously beautiful? _ That secret yearning in him, pulled to the front and wrapped in music, how can it be looked at with such kindness and affection? How can Crowley take a glimpse at his core and give all he finds there such a positive, such a radiant spin?

Ezra’s brows unconsciously knit together and his hands grip the sheets tightly for a moment before he wills the tension from his body. Arguing against a claim he can’t but wants to discuss away hurts his brain so he lets go for the time being to try to concentrate on the pure beauty of the piece itself while omitting its meaning. Which is impossible as he himself had gotten woven into it by that red-headed genius who has so suddenly turned his whole world upside down.

With a deep sigh that borders on a moan he gives up thinking and just lets himself fall into the feeling of being caressed by a thought, a torturously beautiful variation of waves that just were brought to life by a cello.

_Darling boy, what have you done! I have been yours from the moment you sauntered into my café and my life. I gave myself willingly, no need to chain me up in such delicate strings, pulled from the sanctum of your heart and mind. I am not worth that piece of your soul, look how it shines, look how it pretends to bind us together, you, the melody’s composer, and me, whose essence you chose to extract and pour into it! Oh darling, what do I do with this? Yes, it is safe inside me, but look how it burns me with its glory! Some_ _beauty is not made to be stared at for too long, for it would drive the onlooker crazy. I was crazy before, dearest, hollow where my heart used to calmly and gloomily march onwards towards its destined end. You awakened it, you gave it so much energy it left its place and threw itself right at your feet. And now you come and fill this empty space with music, now you press into me something too bright to look at. Look how it glows in my chest! Look how terribly I swoon, shake, weep in the face of it. Oh dearest, what do I do with this?_

There is no answer and so he turns from the unbearably bright image of himself, only to fall back into the memory of the unabashed, pitiless, gorgeous musician’s touch.  _You were his hands, Ezra. And besides, remember, he simply wanted to make sure you see what he sees. Artists are uninhibited, you see, no need to get excited._

Oh, but he is. His belly does a nervous little flip when his thoughts return to their earlier intimate position. What a good thing that it had been him who had sat in the front... With a mortified moan Ezra rolls onto his belly and presses his hips down into his bed. The sudden mental image of Crowley, bony and loose-hipped, underneath him instead of his soft blanket does nothing to solve his growing problem. Oh, wicked creature, most beloved captor of his heart! For a moment Ezra gives in and presses the heel of his hand tightly to his groin. The longed-for pressure draws a shuddering groan from his throat that ends in an embarrassed pant.  _ Oh, darling boy, please forgive my coveting! You see, you’re the one thing I want from life now. Pathetic, I know, but I can’t help it._

Ezra’s hands still tingle slightly where Crowley’s held onto them earlier. He rolls on his side, his hands clasped in front of his chest, relieved and unhappy about it when the memory of Crowley’s guiding hands slowly fades to nothing.

The shallow, fitful sleep he falls into is not long-lasting as his subconscious is obviously not done processing the evening. Crowley is back with him in his dreams, strolling right back into his flat in nothing but his ridiculously pristine apron and his sunglasses, Joseph’s neck in his gentle grip. He leans the cello against the bed and drops to his knees in front of Ezra, his own composition in his throat and a sparkling, lopsided grin on his illegally alluring lips. Dream-Ezra slowly gets up, his legs bracketing Crowley’s skinny frame and his hands carefully pulling the glasses from his face after his affirmative nod. For a moment he simply enjoys the rare view of Crowley’s bare eyes, badly tempted though to let his gaze wander down his lean form.  _Is this really what you look like without your clothes, darling?_ Apparently Ezra’s brain likes to play games with him.

“Something tells me you need another reminder what a vision you are.” Crowley’s voice rips him out of his half-lucid thought.

“Right now it’s you who is the vision, dear.”

Crowley shrugs with a playful grin. “It’s your head we’re in, Ezra. I’m only here to serve you.”

At that a decidedly indecent string of images scurries through Ezra’s unconscious mind. Oh no. Legs around his waist. Hands in that gorgeous red hair down in front of him. This sinful mouth willing to take everything it gets offered. Fingers up his shirt... Fingers!

Ezra shakes the insistent collection of delicious ideas from the forefront of his mind and leans over to grab Crowley’s scarred hands and pull them up to his mouth.

_Thanks brain_ ,  he snaps briefly at himself, _thanks for not even letting me have fun in the privacy of my very own dream!_ Then his focus is back on Crowley and his badly sharpened set of pencils that serve as his fingers. Carefully he presses kisses to every single one of them, angry knots of red and white flesh, rugged where they should be smooth, rigid where they should be soft, until Crowley pulls them from his grip with a gentle shake of his head.

“Don’t, angel. Not now, at least. I came here for you, remember?”

“You’re beautiful,” Ezra gasps and Crowley’s amber gaze is soft as he replies, “As are you, angel. Let me show you?” His hands on Ezra’s thighs slide upwards, gentle and purposefully.

Ezra panics. It’s an illusion, an illusion of his own making even, but still he fears the sudden burst of this bubble too much to give in to his yearning.  _Don’t leave me yet, darling, let me keep the hope that there’s yearning in you as well, don’t force me to face the truth in your eyes when I’ve nothing left to hide behind._

Blindly he reaches for the cello and shoves it into Crowley’s hands.

“Show me this way,” he whispers, his gaze averted and his heart thudding wildly in his chest.

With a sigh but refraining from arguing with him Crowley settles on the bed next to him, picks up the bow and starts to play. He turns to lock gazes with Ezra while he coaxes wood, strings and a bundle of taut horsehair to do their magic with the help of his ruined fingers.

Ezra immediately recognizes the musical theme, it’s the one that got written onto his heart and lives inside him. It starts to vibrate there in sync with the external impulse of Crowley’s playing. It is nothing but moved air, hitting his ear drums and being transferred to his brain as an electric signal, he tries to tell himself. But rationalising doesn’t work here, his composure crumbles under the influence of the revered instrument’s hauntingly beautiful singing.

Crowley’s eyes lose their sharp focus, the small entranced smile from earlier creeps back onto his lips and he launches into a swirling variation of the theme with proficient ease. His smile gets a wicked edge as the music pokes a new flame, a flame that dances all around them and eagerly licks up Ezra’s body.

With a rather undignified pant Ezra notices that it feels like praise of the physical kind now, a gentle, adoring touch to the entirety of his being. Languidly the notes drag along his skin, slow firm strokes of the bow paint a gentle hold around him that he can lean into as a light, dizzying cascade of springy notes dances over him in feverish anticipation. It’s a promise, a siren call from the sharp cliffs of their creator’s shores and it draws Ezra in, not passively, no, he lets go willingly, leaping into the open arms of the surging melody around him. It’s not hard to give himself over to the gentle caress of Crowley’s music, he is touch-starved where it reaches for him, no part of Michael’s embraces, no past fling ever felt so earnest or reached so far. He falls open to the alluring breathless flutter of the melody.

The whispering caress feels tentative, it is bold in its incorporeal advance, but beyond the offer of satisfaction it is begging him to come more than pulling him, while its steady wafting around him holds him safely. This is more than a melodious expression of perceived beauty. It’s a promise of touch, no, a cry for touch, yearning, hungry, claiming. Ezra gasps sharply as the music becomes touch itself, sensuously licking into his ears, caressing down his neck, breathing hotly along his spine and his body reacts like the starved thing that it is.

He writhes under the rush of greedy ghostly fingers that breathe along his skin in trembling, pleading notes. There’s him still, in the notes, held in almost painful reverence, but there’s also more, more than praise or a caress. It suddenly shines bright among the wavering melody. This is a supplication for his consent to be worshipped, it’s worship itself, so much more than he asked for. This thought ends his dream abruptly.

“Crowley!” His beloved’s name a desperate plea on his lips, Ezra jerks awake. He tears his eyes open and huffs into the darkness of his surroundings, teary, slightly sweaty, with a pounding heart and a very insistent hardness between his legs that speaks volumes of the all-encompassing nature of his not-so-secret longing.  _Yeah, right, he’d send his music to ask you to let him worship you. Get a grip on yourself, old fool,_ he scolds himself mentally. _Even fantasies should stay somewhat realistic and not drift into utterly ridiculous territory._

When his breathing has quietened down a bit, Ezra realises that he can still hear the music from his dream. It still waves softly around him, still bemuses his senses, still tantalises his body.  _Crowley must be practicing,_ his brain provides, rather intelligently. _ And look what my mind has made of that._

The music’s effect does not abate, now that he is awake. Ezra presses his eyes shut which does of course nothing to keep the music out. But does he even want that? Why would he want to shut out the long wistful cries of the cello, why should he not want to listen to the yearning call of the music? He can’t. It pulls at his insides, an almost physical tug at his heart that begs his body to follow the cry to its source to make personally sure the source gets what it so audibly sighs for.

Once he has calmed down enough to dare to get up from his bed Ezra leaves his flat. 

Is it a longing for significance, he briefly muses on his short walk over to Crowley’s door, is it the desperate need to give his heart a home in another’s hands that drives him to discern a tangible yearning call in a piece of music that avowedly had been composed with him on its creator’s mind? It’s probably rather an expression for the longing Crowley had detected in him, Ezra, not a desire of his own. This piece had always been about him, not the composer; during their earlier closeness he must have picked up even more of his hidden longings.

He slightly shakes his head in the dark of the hallway. Now that he is perfectly awake again, the idea that this haunting call he perceived could be more than the musical shaping of his very own hidden desires is suddenly utterly absurd. Wishful thinking. A flight of fancy. Projection.

His head against Crowley’s door, Ezra hesitates to actually enter. He rather lets the floating notes in the air around him draw close again until he is entirely wrapped in their besieging whisper and a loud breathy sigh gets wrenched from his throat.

The music doesn’t stop, but Ezra hears Crowley call out his name from inside. So he enters with held breath and finds the man on one of his unbelievably uncomfortable chairs, dressed in definitely more than an apron, but too engrossed in his music to look up to his late-night visitor.

What a sight he is. Ezra swallows hard. Even without the swaying of his hips he effortlessly radiates allure. His face, devoid of its glasses, shines from abandon to his art. Skinny legs in his trademark tight trousers hug his cello, his slender torso in shirtsleeves is leaned towards it, and his fingers, still elegant and graceful despite their disfigurement, touch his instrument with reverence and a soft kind of precise determination that makes Ezra shiver from the idea what they could do to his body beyond enchanting it with their music. He is all sharp angles, yet, contradictorily, curved in the oddest ways which makes him appear utterly boneless.

“Oh Ezra,” he sighs in much the same tone as before, and his bottom lip disappears between his teeth while he gives the singing strings a particularly urgent upwards stroke with his bow that shoots right down to Ezra’s belly.

Ezra has no time to come up with an appropriate reaction, as the music’s spell gets broken by a string of curses from Crowley throat and a vitriolic gaze at the fingers of his left hand. “Don’t you dare interfere with his beauty,” he grumbles at them, the earlier inebriation gone from his speech.

“Let me be your hands again, dear boy?”

To Ezra’s rough whisper Crowley’s head snaps up and his eyes go wide. “How- when- you’re here!”

Ezra steps closer. “I heard a call. Show me?”

“You heard- holy... -you understood?”

“I don’t know. Show me? Please?”

“Come here, angel.”

So he climbs in between Crowley and his instrument, like before, and Crowley makes sure there’s no room between them, like before, and Ezra’s heart is in danger of beating out of his chest, like before. But then, unlike before, Crowley’s hand slides along his thigh and gently pulls it to the side to make sure there’s room for his cello, and then his nose sinks into the curls at Ezra’s neck for a moment, and then his fingers gently brush along his wrist and palm before he presses the bow into Ezra’s hand. And Ezra feels like he’s falling. Falling backwards, into him, a secure embrace protecting him from all harm while ahead of him a hand with gnarled fingers draws a future so bright he has to turn his head from it.

This turn brings his face dangerously close to Crowley’s, and for a few glorious seconds their noses touch and their breaths mingle.

He abruptly turns his much too hot face back to the front.  _Don’t forget yourself, old fool,_ he scolds himself, before all thoughts get pushed from his mind when Crowley’s fingers brush down his arms to land on his hands. For a few trembling seconds there’s nothing but the unbearably hot touch between them before Crowley softly guides Ezra’s hands to the right places to draw the already familiar yearning cries from his instrument.

If Joseph minds being used for raising and feeding the hopes of a hopelessly enamored cook in the arms of the man of all his wild dreams he doesn’t speak up. He lets the two use him to express things they can’t put words to. He sings, of entangled dancers under the moon, under the sheets, under nothing but their Almighty’s loving gaze. He dutifully communicates their little breathy moans, he insists on emphasising their racing heartbeats, he smugly forces them to move in unison.

All three of them are agitated, captured in a drunken whirl of notes that scream with them, for them, passionately and unflinchingly.

_ Beautiful boy, what are you doing, don’t let your music make me lose control, you don’t know what I’m capable of! _

Ezra aches, and how could he stay calm, caught between his beloved musician and his creation of passion and desire. The music vibrates up his arms and all through him, its expressive power so intense he instinctively tries to shrink back from it. His turned face ends up in the crook of Crowley’s neck, who pants audibly when Ezra’s hot breaths hit his bare clavicles. The music stumbles to an abrupt halt as Crowley’s hand drops from the bow to Ezra’s thigh. There it holds onto the fabric of his trousers like a drowning person to a lifeline. Ezra forgets to breathe for a moment, his hips moving forward on their own accord in search of something Joseph between his legs can’t offer.

The hot hot hand on his leg lets go of the fabric and lies deceptively still while its owner in his back moves impossibly closer still. The moment Ezra thinks he feels a new distinctive hardness pressed into his backside his attention quite suddenly gets drawn to his own aching erection that strains his trousers in a really way too short distance to the hand on his thigh.

“Forgive me, dear boy,” he pants. He frantically leaps to his feet, squeezes himself out from behind the cello.

“No need to leave, angel!” is the last thing he hears on his way out the door. The audible grin in Crowley’s casual reply haunts him all the way back down to his own flat.

Oh dear Lord, that was a close call! For a moment he had really made himself believe Crowley, beautiful, achingly perfect Crowley, could reciprocate his silly desires. Just because he had let him partake in his art.  _You are his hands, Ezra, he draws on you and your overflowing heart._ Oh, he shouldn’t have meddled with something he understands not half as much of as Crowley!

No matter the reason for this moment out of his personal fantasy, this time he does takes matters in hand as soon as he is back in his flat. The house is silent now, nothing but Ezra’s pants fill the air around him as he unceremoniously shoves his trousers and pants down his hips before he gets back onto his bed and desperately grips his hard, leaking cock. He doesn’t need long at all to draw close to the edge. When he closes his eyes Crowley is back with him, all mischievous smile, cocked eyebrow and glinting eyes.

“Beautiful, angel,” he hears him say, “now be a good angel and come for me, will you?”

Ezra does, of course. He’d do anything Crowley asks of him, real or imagined. When mess and clothes are taken care of he finally drifts into a deep sleep, and if Crowley visits him in his dreams again, he mercifully can’t remember the next morning.


End file.
